Beyond the digital nomad: Transnational digital workers in Lisbon

Abstract

This article examines the platformisation of urban life in Southern Europe, highlighting Lisbon as a key hub in the global outsourcing of digital labour. It identifies a model of digital corporate urbanism driven by transnational technology platforms and intermediary firms, where capital attraction, workforce management, and urban policy converge under the logic of global competitiveness. Based on qualitative research involving interviews and participant observation, the study explores the experiences of transnational digital workers employed by companies such as Teleperformance, Accenture, and Sitel for essential tasks on platforms including TikTok and Google (content moderation, customer service, technical support). Despite being portrayed as part of the digital and creative economy, these workers face precarious and monitored labour conditions that contradict narratives of autonomy and innovation. The findings challenge the idealisation of the digital nomad, showing that the mobility of these workers is not a lifestyle choice but a response to structural precarity and limited opportunities in their home countries. Their jobs, framed as technological, are characterized by routinisation, emotional strain, algorithmic control, and economic instability. Company-provided housing reinforces dependence and reveals the entanglement between work, dwelling, and urban regulation in a context of housing crisis. Lisbon thus emerges as a strategic laboratory of platform capitalism, where global outsourcing intersects with local real estate dynamics. This configuration reproduces a new digital division of labour in which overqualification coexists with repetitive, low-paid tasks, turning the city into an active agent that integrates labour, housing, and capital accumulation under the regime of digital urbanism.